At the local level, all the budget hype has been about the city’s General Fund — where your taxes go, the pot out of which Austin pays its cops and firemen, librarians, planners, and parks staff. More than two-thirds of the actual annual, city of Austin budget, however, lies within the “enterprise funds,” the self-supporting civic enterprises like the airport and convention center — and, largest among them, the utilities. And just as, over the next few years of fiscal crisis, your property taxes are bound to go up, so are the fees you pay to the city utilities. (And the noncity ones, too.) Here’s a rundown:
Austin Energy
The power company proudly tells whomever will listen that it “hasn’t raised its base rates since 1994.” (And says it has no plans to, even though on July 17 the City Council will be asked to approve as-yet-unpublicized “changes” to the electric-rate schedules.) But the base rate — which, for the average residential customer, ranges from 3.55 to 7.82 cents per kilowatt-hour, depending on your usage and the season — only forms, at most, about 60% of your electric bill. The other big line item is the fuel charge, which Austin Energy passes on “dollar for dollar” to customers.
Determining the fuel charge is a complex formula, since AE uses many different kinds of fuel, in different proportions every day — natural gas at the Decker, Holly, and Sand Hill plants, coal at the Fayette plant it owns jointly with the Lower Colorado River Authority, and, sadly, nuclear power at the South Texas Project, which is currently off-line again due to safety concerns. The Nuke leak and, more importantly the skyrocketing price of natural gas are why AE says it is preparing to nearly double the customer fuel charge, in three steps between now and January, from the current 1.77 cents per kWh to 2.8 cents. (This is a lot lower than the fuel charge paid by customers of Reliant Energy — majority owner of the Nuke — in Houston or of Texas Utilities in Dallas, AE proudly proclaims.)
This means your overall electric bill will be between 13% and 16% higher by 2004 — unless you’re one of the lucky folks who signed up for Green Choice. Since AE’s renewable energy contracts are fixed, even though Green Choice customers are paying more for their wind power than others are paying for their gas, coal, and nuclear power, their bills won’t be going up.
Water and Wastewater
Unlike natural gas, water is free for the taking; it’s the taking that costs money, and for Austin it’s going to cost a lot more money. What the city calls the Austin Clean Water Program is actually a massive capital improvement project to fix the city’s decrepit sewer system and reduce the unacceptable frequency of sewer overflows. Unacceptable, that is, to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is ready to fine the city $27,500 a day if it doesn’t fix the problem by 2008. The cost of the ACWP is estimated at $150 million. Combine that with the general need to expand Austin’s water system to keep up with growth and to fix mains that aren’t in any better shape than the sewers, and that explains why your water and wastewater bill will go up 15.6% over the next two years. (To be precise, a combined increase, between water and wastewater, of 5.9% in September and 9.7% a year hence.)
Drainage
The drainage fee, which supports the Watershed Protection department — including water-quality monitoring at Barton Springs, along with general care of our many creeks and our always-urgent efforts at flood control — is likewise going up, consistent with a nearly decadelong effort to bring the fee on your bill in line with what Watershed Protection actually costs. The big fee hikes are for commercial customers, who have to pay based on their impervious cover and whose drainage fees will have more than doubled between 2001, when the cost-of-service increases started, and 2006. Residential users, who saw the fee go up 11% this year, will see an additional 22% increase by 2006 (although the actual dollar increase for residential customers is relatively small, roughly $1.25 per month).
Solid Waste Services
Hooray! No rate increase! But this is only being accomplished by “changes to the service delivery model” — most obviously, garbage, recycling, and yard waste will (the council willing) likely no longer be picked up on the same day. This allows the recycling and yard-trimming trucks to cover a larger area on each route, among other money-saving efficiencies. But even with this, you’d be unwise to plan your future household budgets presuming no increase in solid-waste fees in 2005 or 2006.
Transportation Fee
The city’s tax — oops, we mean “user fee” — for street maintenance will likewise not go up this year, but you can look at the condition of the streets and guess for yourself how long that will last.
This article appears in June 20 • 2003.